E-marketing 639
patterns (seeing what’s selling and what’s not,
recorded in the web log, which reveals insights
into interests determined by pages visited).
On-line surveys ask how to improve the site
or products. Finally, there is a proliferation of
on-line secondary sources of research, many of
which provide free in-depth insights into
customer needs.
Anticipatecustomer needs by asking customers
questions and engaging them in a dynamic
dialogue built on the trust of opt-in e-mail.
Collaborative filtering, as used by Amazon,
helps to identify and anticipate what customers
might like given that buyers of similar books
have similar interests. Profiling techniques
allow many companies to perform data mining
to discover and anticipate buyer’s needs.
Cookie-based profiling allows companies to
analyse a visitor’s interests without even
knowing your name – courtesy of a piece of
code sent to the visitor’s PC. It recognizes
your PC and records which types of sites
(interests) you have and can serve adverts and
offers based on predicted interests.
Satisfyneeds with prompt responses, punctual
deliveries, order status updates, helpful
reminders, after-sales services and added value
services, combined with the dynamic dialogue.
The dialogue maintains permission to continue
communicating and then adds value by
delivering useful content in the right context
(right time and right amount).
Efficientlymeans in an automated way (or
partially automated)... an efficient, yet
hopefully not impersonal, way (i.e. it allows
tailor-made technology to improve service
quality and increase the marketer’s memory to
help maintain the customer relationship
through time).
It is apparent from these applications that
e-marketing extends beyond the website to
include all use of digital technology to manage
the customer relationship. Databases are
increasingly used to manage and record all
interactions with customers, whether sales
transactions, inbound enquiries via phone or
e-mail and outbound communications such as a
mail shot or e-mail shot.
An alternative perspective on e-marketing
is provided by the term ‘Internet marketing’,
which has been described simply as ‘the applica-
tion of the Internet and related digital technologies
to achieve marketing objectives’ (Chaffey et al.,
2003). In practice, Internet-based marketing is a
subset of e-marketing that will include the use
of a company website in conjunction with
promotional techniques such as banner adver-
tising, direct e-mail and links or services from
other websites to acquire new customers and
provide services to existing customers that help
develop the customer relationship.Participants in e-marketing
The options for digital communications
between a business and its customers are
summarized in Figure 25.1. The bulk of Inter-
net business both now and in the forseeable
future comes from industrial and commercial
markets known as business-to-business (B2B),
and not consumer markets known as busi-
ness-to-consumer (B2C) markets. Most esti-
mates suggest that B2B companies will reap 10
times more revenue than their B2C counter-
parts. In 2000, Gartner estimated that world-
wide B2B transactions will rise from $145
billion in 1999 to $7.3 trillion in the year 2004.
These increases are driven by the desire of
large organizations to reduce costs and
increase supply chain efficiency. For example,
in the late 1990s, General Electric made the
decision to procure $1 billion worth of pur-
chases on-line in year 1, followed by $3 billion
in year 2, followed by total procurement on-
line. More recently, Cisco Systems announced
that they will no longer do business with
suppliers who can’t take orders via the web.
Ford and General Motors have combined for-
ces through the B2B marketplace Covisint
(www.covisint.net) and moved their $300 and
$500 billion dollar supply chains on-line.
Already large-scale trading is occurring. It was
reported in May 2001 that the largest auction